I'm going to open with a little anecdote about some of the poorest timing I've ever had in my life.

In October/November 2011 (ish) having just started Sixth Form and getting used to being a mature college student (and part time lifeguard).Visualise the Science block as being one long, narrow corridor with classrooms on each side. I walk out of one and bump straight into a friend and colleague (she's a lifeguard too) in the year above leaving her own classroom. Recalling at the weekend, she mentioned something about a gym induction on Sunday, and today being Monday, I asked her 'Hey! How was your gym induction?'
Her: 'Oh, it was....fine, thanks. Yeah.'
A little hurt, I turned to walk away, only to realise that a teacher was following her and she was holding onto a friend having a panic attack...

LENATIMING. ALWAYS PERFECT.

Anyway, I had this post schedueled but in the light of recent events, thought I'd edit this in because my internal appropriateness clock seems to be broken.

I made my first order from EyeCandyLens.com in the run up to my school musical. It took a couple of weeks to get to the UK (from South Asia, so pretty impressive I guess).

 
 The phials they come in are SO CUTE. Very sharp edges, though :/


 I'm not a noob to wearing contact lenses, but I only wear daily disposables so don't really have to faff with correct cleaning and storage. With these, I was really quite stupid and didn't read the leaflet properly, so put them in the supplied case (cleaned with hot water first, obviously) with some saline solution and allowed them to soak. Needless to say, when I put them in my eyes they were really quite uncomfortable? I could feel them every time I blinked, and they itched. But, having heard that circle lenses are less comfortable anyway and that they were a bit thicker, I put up with it, thinking I was just new to circle lenses. I soaked and cleaned them religiously, but not with the correct solution. I'm a numpty, I know.



Did this for three or four cycles, before realising that they were meant to be soaked in multipurpose solution, and not saline. I don't know if I've ever had a bigger Eureka moment than the first time I put them on after they'd spent the night in that...almost as comfortable as my usual daily disposables. Reading is fun!

Without:


With:


Please ignore the eyebrow forest and failed false eyelash application in both cases.

I ordered prescription lenses in the design 'Flower Black'.

Postage was free (and they came with a cute bag and a free contact lens case) which is what initially attracted me to them. I paid £14.19 in total which was pretty much the cheapest for just one pair of lenses that I could find, on the internet. Because I have poor vision, I needed prescription lenses. Lots of places on the internet, even some in the UK, do prescription lenses, but you have to participate in a 'batch order' which I thought was stupid and didn't want to do. Why not just keep a few of each in stock? I don't want to have to wait for everyone else to finish ordering before the store sends off for them, waits to recieve them, then package them up and send them to ME. I'm impatient, deal with it.

Some lens shops that I found on my searches only had a couple of very very popular plano (no corrective power) lenses in stock and everything else was marked either 'out of stock' or 'batch order only'. Go away.

Anyway, I was going to end this review with a little 'I'm very happy with how this went and I'm already saving up to order again' but yesterday my Twitter feed came up with this.

This is the 'poor timing' I was referring to earlier on.

I've got to reconsider now, my previous attitude towards my contact lenses...all that time I was happily soaking them wrong, cleaning them incorrectly...could have done some serious damage to my eyes. And that would have been entirely self-inflicted, through ignorance and carelessness - HystericMint was as careful as you can get and through no fault of her own, something this bad could happen to her eyes, so imagine what I could have done to myself?

The worst thing about her post, in my opinion, was that, considering the huge costs incurred in the damage to her education, optometrist bills, etc. (I always forget that not everyone is lucky enough to live in a country with an NHS-like system) the compensation she was offered was pretty minimal. The company isn't named so I don't know which one it is, but I would hope that the next time I shop with a circle lens supplier, in the event of one of their lenses being faulty (not due to my own cack-handedness) that they would fully support me in any way necessary, as a paying customer. In future, when I next purchase lenses, that will be something I investigate before buying - whether companies can man up and take responsibility when required.

Just to clarify, my personal order was great - nothing went wrong at any stage.

For the time being, I am happy.

 I can't even be bothered to make a snide comment about the naming choice.
 I really dig the glitter in this. It's dense enough so that the entire polish looks more like a dark gunmetal grey from a distance, and close up it looks really interesting. It's not quite "stars in the night sky" though, which is probably what they were aiming for. It's too small and evenly sized for that.
 I dig this. If I remember correctly, it was opaque in one coat and the formula was lush to apply. I did two coats to be on the safe side, though.
 It's not your basic black, it's funky and interesting. I like it. It wore well but I took it off about only two days as I had a design I wanted to try out. Typical of me. Sorry!
I purchased this for £2 as Boots were doing their £5 off vouchers at the time. Has anyone else noticed that prices vary regionally? The big Boots in the city sold these for £1.75 with the voucher, and I get to my Boots locally (still quite large, but with only two floors as opposed to three in the city) and it's £2.00. Why the inconsistancy?

 Yeah, I did another set lol. Only I did these before Halloween but posted them after like the uncool person I am. And my photo taking sucked as well because these were on my right hand and it's incredibly awkward for me to take photos of that hand without having the aforementioned hand turn into a creepy claw like appendage.
What do you think? BeautyUK's Slate, Miss Sporty Nail Polish in Black and this white one I got from a manicure set in Poundland.

Note - students, be wary of people offering you sweets. One of my friends offered me one today and I ate it and then threw it at him because he'd painted it with that Stop N Grow stuff some people put to stop themselves biting their nails. VILE. And my aim sucks so it only bounced of his jumper. Someone else that he did it to managed to get him in the head with it, and he said it hurt, though, which I found incredibly funny. So yeah. Beware, I telleth thee.

Before you see the pictures, I apologise for the lack of cleanup - I just /knew/ I'd be told to take it off at school so painted it the night before and quickly snapped it before I went to school.

So it's my alltime favourite hot pink (I only have two, but let's overlook that little fact, shall we) over BeautyUK's "Slate". I've always wanted to do a pink and grey look and will probably repeat this one at some point, but neatly.

There's a bit of bonus Konading for you on the middle finger. It's the Miss Sporty brand but I don't think they name their polishes, so it's just the black polish with the blue lid lol.

It needs improvement, but what do you guys think about the colour combination?

This is a black Miss Sporty nail polish with that glitter polish applied over it. Like I mentioned earlier, the upside of dramatically shortened nails is the ability to rock dark colours with impunity. Er, when you're not at school, of course *shifty eyes* I was lucky not to get caught with this lol.
Not to say that longer nails can't wear dark colours. I personally think it looks awesome on both lengths but the general consensus seems to be no? That's what I see in the magazines, anyway. *is ignorant*. I don't know. What do you guys think?

Here are some random entries I've put together for the Beautopia Nail Art competition, amongst others. (There's also one going on at Glamorous Geek Chic and one that has been cancelled at Lali Amora)

This I created with: My white franken as a base, followed with Maybelline Colorama in Tropical Peach, then the Boots 17 Purple, then the Avon Blue. I then freehanded with a black nail art pen.



For this, I used Miss Sporty Nail Polish in Black, with the Boots generic pink nail polish, Miss Sporty Clubbing Colours in yellow, Maybelline Colorama in Jelly Bean and Nails Inc Brompton Place on the tips. I then freehanded an abstract design over them. My cuticles look overly greasy in some of these - I was trying out this new cream...don't ask :P
 Which, if any, are your favourites? Plus don't forget to check out the other entries here!

Love,

September Lena

 First, I'd just like to say thank you to Le Vernis Chocolat for the Love Your Blog award!

http://levernischocolat.blogspot.com/2010/04/love-your-blog-award.html

I'm going to tag:

Susie's Home and Hobbies
The Chain Nail
The Gloss Goss
Dr Frankenpolish
Toxic Lipstick

These are all really great blogs!

About the nail polish:

The dismal grossness of the yellow was merely a blip, thank goodness. This black has restored my trust in Miss Sporty.

You see that? This polish, if you play it right, is a one coater - yes, ladies and gentlemen, a one coater for only £2. Still, I did two on most of the fingers just out of habit, I guess. The formula is alright, I guess - could be improved. It's not as good as the Metal Shine formula but is still miles better than that disgusting yellow. It's slightly streaky but that can be gotten around.This is the sort of polish that should be a staple in every broke teenagers make up kit. Perhaps not for school, but hey, isn't black meant to be all fashiony, angsty and edgy all into one? Yeah? Urgh. I really can't stand posers. There are some kids at my school who go around wearing half a stick of eyeliner on their faces, listening to Paramore and Showaddywaddy (yeah, I hadn't heard of them either) and claiming that they're "glam rockers" or something...it's just so ridiculous. Funny, certaintly, but ridiculous. Anyway. I digress. Point is, this is a cool black colour to wear. Warning - is still prone to smudging after a large amount of time has elapsed. Once again the one minute drying thing is just bull.


Not bad, is it? Oh, by the way, this polish is surprisingly good for Konading. So yeah, all in all, I'd buy it again.

*sigh* Do you hear that? It's the collective sigh of, I don't know, a million plus British schoolchildren. School starts up again tommorow. Do you know what that means? It means NO POLISH. Or at least, very subtle polish. So, I'm taking the opportunity to try out this Sally Hansen Miracle Grow/Cure thingymagic that I've just been given, because my nails are all horrible and peely right now :( I've got loads of pictures and swatches stored up for you guys, so don't worry! But yeah, I'll see if I can go this week five days four days, maybe, with a clear polish on to try and give my nails a rest.

Love,

September Lena

I decided to swach some more nail polishes today. This was the Avon "Flash" featured in the previous haul.

I decided to open the Miss Sporty black nail polish I got yesterday and Konad with it.
I personally thought the result wasn't bad! It was a lot more pigmented than I thought it would be and all in all was quite good for stamping with.

I said those orange nails were crying out for nail art, haha.

Sorry about the lack of cleanup. Anyway, I did these with these two nail polishes:
The radioactive warning signs could have ben a little less messy, but yeah. Happy Holy Saturday, by the way :D

Oh wow. So today, (Good Friday) I went to Superdrug, which is a good relatively cheap UK drugstore, similar to Boots (and it's basically the HOME of Barry M, haha). I wanted to get some new polish colours and I knew exactly what I had in mind - Barry M. Headed straight for the cosmetics aisle and scoured the shelves...there it was! All sorts of Barry M goodness. However, the polishes were £2.95 and Miss Sporty were doing a sale on their own colours - (three for two) so instead of getting the Barry M yellow, I bought the Miss Sporty yellow (they looked fairly similar, not dupes but close) and got Barry M Mint Green instead. I was in polish heaven :P The choice was truly mind boggling - there was almost every nail paint there apart from the very new Ice Cream ones for summer! Even the glitters were there! Also, there was all sorts of Rimmel, Maybelline and GOSH. I did look interestedly at the GOSH having seen it featured in some other nail polish blogs - a gorgeous holo silver - but quickly backed away when I saw it was £5. Wtf? I'm a student! Why pay £5 for a limited range of colours when I could get two or even three nice ones for that type of money?

They look so pretty all lined up!


The Miss Sporty brands claim to dry in 60 seconds. I'll have to test that claim.
The black claims to last for up to 7 days. For a cheap nail polish that's really quite good but again, I'll have to see for myself.
 My gorgeous Barry M :)
I have waited so long to own thee.

I've had bad experiences with the Miss Sporty Black in the past - one completely thickened up beyond belief and seized manically after about three years or so. I had to throw the whole bottle away. Still, they've changed the bottle design since then and if the formula has changed to allow it to stay on for 7 days...there's hope. I think it feels better knowing that your colours were cheapass. Bye for now.